I’m writing this as I leave the Sofia, Bulgaria International Airport bound for Brussels. It’s about 7:45 a.m. on Wednesday, August 25th Sofia time or about 10:45 p.m. Pocatello time yesterday. The flight is fairly full and the airport was very crowded and a hubbub of noise and confusion this morning when we arrived. This was a very busy two days with not a lot of time to do much sightseeing.
The flight leaves Sofia, flies over Serbia, Hungary, Austria, and Germany before arriving in Brussels, a distance of about 1,500 kilometers and 2.5 hours of flight. We’ll fly over the cities of Budapest, Vienna, and Nuremberg on the way.
Some impressions of Bulgaria:
“Money from the wall” is a term I’ve heard several times referring to getting money from an ATM machine.
There are police at many intersections directing traffic. The policeman holds a short, white rod with a small red reflector on the end. When it’s time for the other direction to go, he blows a whistle, steps into the middle of traffic holding up the white rod and traffic obeys.
Lots of cobblestone streets. They are very rough and the ride on these streets is bumpy and uncomfortable.
The traffic drives VERY fast. Lane markers are “suggestions” and one needs a good grip in a taxicab! In fact the taxis are quite the spectacular ride. They all drive like it’s the end of days if they can’t go pell-mell down the road. Problem is, most roads are in pretty bad shape and a ride down the road is accompanied by loud screeches and squeals as vehicles barrel around corners and come to an emergency stop.
I spent some time in a government tax building. It is very typical of many buildings — a nice building when it was built, but no maintenance at all in the meantime. This building hasn’t seen paint in at least 50 years. The chairs in the hallway were cast off chairs that the fabric was worn off, the padding long since gone, and because no one throws anything away, they’ll still be there in ten years. The copy machine was in a corner closet with boxes of paper files all around the machine. There were paper files in the men’s room stacked beside the toilet. I haven’t ever seen so many official government paper files so haphazardly stored and managed.
Red hair is the desirable trait. Lots of females have dyed their hair red and the brighter the red, the more flamboyant the clothing. In many cases, there isn’t much clothing left to stimulate the imagination as it is.
Everyone carries cigarettes and more than half the population smoke, but no one smokes in offices or hallways. It must be against the law.
English is the common language. Most everyone in Sofia speaks a little bit of English. The second most common language is German. If two people from different countries meet, they’ll speak English.
When you get into a taxicab, at least one person always sits in front beside the driver. If there’s only one passenger, that person will be riding in the front passenger seat.
At all the stoplights in the morning there are people walking through the traffic selling newspapers.
The women in Bulgaria dress very sharply at the office and are very feminine. It’s sometimes quite distracting.
There are a lot of people walking outside all day long. But after about 9 p.m., no one seems to be out walking anywhere.
Beer is available for all ages and it wasn’t uncommon to see young boys sitting at the restaurant table drinking beer as their preferred drink.
Lots of Gypsies — mostly begging. They are easy to pick out of the crowd as well as they have distinctive facial coloring and mannerisms. They are VERY insistent in their begging. They are really despised by the people and the Gypsies get a lot of verbal and occasional physical abuse. In Bulgaria, they’re called "Roma".
The large churches or cathedrals have flea markets in front of them. Lots of old cameras, old microscopes, and old sextants for sale. Bargaining is the rule and aggressive bargaining might yield pricing only twice what the goods are really worth.
All of the larger parks have tented table seating where one can buy beer, soft drinks, pizza, and other snacks. Some of these kiosks are quite large and at noon they are very popular.
One of the side effects of Communism is that most women work. There are very few stay-at-home wives. Pay and promotion ability are supposedly equal for either sex. The meetings we had with Bulgarian companies substantiated this observation.
The roads aren’t in very good shape and the sidewalks are in terrible shape. Getting around in a wheelchair would be impossible. Lots of buildings are missing large chunks of fascia. Because of that, it seems to me to e a good idea not to walk on the sidewalk!
The people were very friendly and the food was delicious. We had two dinner meals – one at a country restaurant on the outskirts of Sofia and the other in a restaurant downtown. Good food and great atmosphere.
Perhaps I’ll never get back to Sofia, but two days wasn’t nearly enough. It’s a delightfully fascinating city.